I miss the old days

[MoanaLisa]

Seconded. It's a thing that I as a moderator in WoWGen don't even look here very often. And when I do I haven't missed much. I miss that terribly.

The changes to SP in Legion stripped away most of the layers of the character I had known since Burning Crusade. I didn't like the class fantasy and I'm not fond of the gameplay either.

I appreciate Discord for what it is but don't use it too much as it's ephemeral and demands more attention than I have time to give it. So I'm playing a very casual game these days. Mostly solo and more observing the game than participating in it. I never liked the theme for BfA so that was the straw that broke the back of the game for me (for now).

[Yes but actually no]

While it's a taboo subject on mmochamp i just want to point out everything you miss still actually does exist to a fairly considerable extent, just not on official blizzard servers. You're just unfortunately never gonna get new content to discuss, debate and enjoy on them.
New theorycraft does pop up though on the platforms for these unofficial servers and people do still experiment, a silly but effective one that came up for priests in legacy leveling is weaving in autoattacks between wand attacks to increase dps.

[Theed]

I miss those days too. I quit early BFA mainly because the current sp design is not fun and blizzards design policy sucks(no huge class changes in patches, fail to acknowledge design issues in alpha/beta). 9.0 is pretty much my last hope, but I will do some facemelting in classic for sure.
I just love the old mindflay animation.
And blackout.
And old shadowform.
And being a tanky pvp god. <3

Until then I'm rocking Destiny 2 which is exceptional and is even getting better very soon.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

The forums dying is a recent thing though. Both the HowToPriest (spiritual successor to Shadowpriest.com) forums and these forums were very active all the way up to late WoD/early Legion (when Discord became mainstream and all classes got their own servers). When the admins actively killed off H2P in favour of the current Warcraftpriests.com (which doesn't even have a forum), that was the final nail in the coffin.

This happened to all the class sites btw. It was just more noticeable for SPs, because the SP forums have historically been one of the most active out of all the theorycrafting sites, and the by far most active if you take class population into account.

The changes to SP in Legion stripped away most of the layers of the character I had known since Burning Crusade. I didn't like the class fantasy and I'm not fond of the gameplay either.

The original SP was completely stripped away in MoP tbh. I hated the MoP redesign more than I hated the Legion one. Cata and WoD were the two best versions of Shadow, and both got redesigned when they were at their peak. Consider the pitiful state BFA Shadow is in (in terms of mechanics, not numbers), it wouldn't surprise me if Blizz decided to keep this skeleton for the next expansion aswell.

When it comes to class design, Blizz has a long history of breaking things that are working properly after a single expansion, while keeping things that are fundamentally broken for multiple expansions...

[marathal]

Maybe I am just old, but there is a nagging thought in my head concerning Discord, I am waiting for the shoe to drop and fees to be implemented. As large as it has become, there has to be a breaking point where without any viable competition, someone gets the idea of charging a few dollars a year for channels, or perhaps individual fees. I hope I am wrong, or at least it doesn't happen any time soon.

[Yvaelle]

It's unlikely.

Discord is the dominant version of the program, but Curse had their own version (Curse Voice) before Discord which was really good, and managed WoW mods (I still use it for mod management).

Twitch made their own version too, then bought Curse, rebranded Curse Voice to Twitch Voice, then discontinued Twitch Voice (both): likely because they had lost the market share to Discord.

But if Discord ever attempted to charge fees, Twitch(owned by Amazon) could just turn Twitch Voice back on for free. Exposure is worth more than money to Amazon, so Discord is in the position of either running their app for free, or competing with competitors with infinite money hacks enabled (Amazon).

[Outofmana]

They've got no clue how to design the priest. Voidform play is beyond annoying and the entire spec feels clunky and has been for ages. How good was shadow to pick up in let's say wotlk and mind seer those sartharion whelps away.

Same with holy priest though, no one in their right mind would play one and think a casttime on prayer of mending makes the class not feel clunky and immobile. Priest has been horribly designed for years on end now. Shadow shit design started in MoP, Holy shit design started in cata (Chakra in 10mans LUL) and there's been not a single improvement bar a short while in MoP for holy. Otherwise, it feels unplayably clunky, unfun, tiresome and inept at some roles in both specs (never played disc ever).

Heck TBC had both shadow and holy down perfectly, guess it's classic and classic tbc time to play an actual fun priestspec to play again.

[marathal]

Priest has been horribly designed for years on end now.

I believe the comment made for many years was,


We'll be fine.


LOL, looking back all these years later.

[Kithelle]

Yup, as others have pointed out, these conversations still happen in a much more active way on streams and especially in discords.

The people talking about Classic are ironic to me, because there will be essentially no mystery to theorycraft over or even discuss at this point.

I miss the old days of forums being the go-to, but those days are just over, and playing Classic in 2019 isn't going to bring them back.

For me, I do regret their passing, but find the current conversations much more natural and engaging.
Being able to discuss these things real time in the various methods is much more natural than leaving a post on a thread one at a time.

Unfortunately some people don't seem to get that....till the end of Vanilla there was still mystery. More than a decade later that is gone, there are literally so many things that take the fun and mystery out of classic and to ignore them leaves you behind. There will be no hybrid specs or having fun, if you don't take the best spec and talent build you'll be left behind for several reasons...there will be a elitism returning that hasn't been in WoW for years.

But all they can see is almost 15 years ago through their rose tinted glasses and think everything is going to be exactly like they think it was oh so many years ago, but it wont.

[probert]

Unfortunately some people don't seem to get that....till the end of Vanilla there was still mystery. More than a decade later that is gone, there are literally so many things that take the fun and mystery out of classic and to ignore them leaves you behind. There will be no hybrid specs or having fun, if you don't take the best spec and talent build you'll be left behind for several reasons...there will be a elitism returning that hasn't been in WoW for years.

But all they can see is almost 15 years ago through their rose tinted glasses and think everything is going to be exactly like they think it was oh so many years ago, but it wont.

The raids are bigger so there's more room to carry suboptional specs (unless you're at the cutting edge of progression).

Current WoW design, the raiding is the content so the design objective is to get everyone into it as early as possible. Every patch has catchup mechanics so people can queue in LFR as soon as possible. Dungeons are irrelevant for gearing (for the most part), so they invented Mythic+ to make the content relevant and viable.

Past WoW design, raiding was the reward. the 'grind' to get to the level cap, get geared, get consumables, was part of the process earning the reward to go raiding. the challenge was getting to the raid, not the raid itself. Better economy, more player engagement, less chasing of shinies and more chasing of experience.

Current WoW is targeted at the iphone generation, whose used to paying $ for unlcoks to get to the next level of candy crush. They're desperate to keep the churn down, players subscribed, and sales maintained. Soothing the ego of players is the design focus.

Classic has most of its theory crafting resolved, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for further experimentation. And the journey 1-60 -> dungeons -> molten core -> later raids is more compelling than anything WoW has offered since Cataclysm dropped.

[Kithelle]

snip

So big as in you're running around for hours just picking off trash and having to watch out you don't pull don't pull to much. Sitting around for hours and hours and hours in a raid isn't healthy and it's boring to be honest. It sure wasn't a level of skill when lets be honest that Naxx was really the only tough one to run. The only thing about the other raids that was tough was getting 40 players if you didn't have a dedicated raid group.

That's all classic was, it was nothing but a grind...go into a 40 man raid and pray you get something and likely get nothing unless once again, you had a dedicated raid. I'm sorry but I don't find time sinks "fun". People are so hung up on gear, especially of the color. Purples are now the blues of the past...so what? It's not like you can find purples in the world that are as powerful as mythic raiding gear of the same level....who cares if the gear is blue or purple? I don't....

Current WoW isn't like that at all....sure you can buy a level boost but it wont give you a entire set of mythic raid gear.

Classic is a been there done that there isn't anything new it's all old and people have had almost 15 years to work on things....there is no mystery.

[marathal]

For me, since I started mid Wrath, I never experienced the original Shadowpriest design. I have heard the Mana Battery term many times over the years, I do recall how we were prior to ICC, and all the other things, no riding, etc. But I do miss the talent trees, I miss the knowing that these were the talents you chose. I loved multi dotting, loved working to maintain the high up times, haste break points. Compared to our constant up and down, in voidform, out of voidform, building insanity, mash all the buttons, cursing because you're just 1% below the point where everything starts lining up and getting a nice upgrade only to see it has Versatility.

Will I go full on just Classic? I doubt it. I will try it for the experience, and to set up the guild for all those interested in being there.


I will say this thread is going places, LOL. Nice to see people talking.

[LeGin Tufnel]

/snip

That's a great post.

Kudos to you and all the other theorycrafters who gave their time back then.

I gained a huge amount from sp.com etc.

[Alanar]

Of course I miss the old Shadowpriest days, but what I mean is I miss the old days of forum activity, I miss that desire to log into SP.com to read up on Kilee's discussion thread, the days when I would go read Elitist Jerks, would come here to find answers, even WoW's forums. Things change I guess, it's a different game than when many of us started playing. I'm still around even though I mostly lurk.

Any good impressions of what is coming, or where they may look to design us in the future?

My time was logging into thottbot if any one found this stuff yet ( refreshing page etc)
Forums are toxic, been a lurker here for a long time, before I was trying to care.

I just come and go for juicy news.. but those days are long gone sadly.

- - - Updated - - -

Unfortunately some people don't seem to get that....till the end of Vanilla there was still mystery. More than a decade later that is gone, there are literally so many things that take the fun and mystery out of classic and to ignore them leaves you behind. There will be no hybrid specs or having fun, if you don't take the best spec and talent build you'll be left behind for several reasons...there will be a elitism returning that hasn't been in WoW for years.

But all they can see is almost 15 years ago through their rose tinted glasses and think everything is going to be exactly like they think it was oh so many years ago, but it wont.

I hope many people will hit their heads.. I mean for me it's obvious that, that time is gone, people who believe that *feel* will return will be dissapointed. I think everyone(almost every one) who played in vanilla will either not play or will do it for the lols with friends. Vanilla was never actually that fun.. it's just because the game was new and things were slow like that, now 2019 people don't have time and pretend they don't have time, so it will be a huge letdown when they will not be able to play it fast like Retail.

Oo yea The elitist (your name tho) will idd return with people from later expansion I think, not so much people who played during that time.


Many of my friends who I played with during vanilla got back to try out Retail again and also vanilla to have some fun and they asked me if I tag along.. I am still not sure tbh.

[sourlol]

I’m sure there’s as much minutia at the top end as there always has been.

But wow mythic raiding is today more about mechanical skill than it ever has been. Which is sad, because it was past iterations of our spec that were more mechanically (from a button pressing perspective) interesting than the seeming spam fest we have now.

My heyday with shadow and hardcore progression raiding was Wrath - MOP (I healed till naxx25 which was so easy the RL let us drop a healer).

If warriors and mages were the guitar part on guitar hero, sp was the bass. We didn’t have big CDs (well we had wings, but that was a far cry from the 3min CDs other classes got) we were all about consistency and “groove”. Big crits didn’t interest me as much as 98%+ uptime on VT or being only 1 mind blast off my theoretical max after X minutes of occasional movement combat.

I don’t feel like the bass player anymore. I was sort of okay being the guy who did X on a single target but did nearly 2X with a second mob and on a true multi target council fight, I’d have the potential to be entire % points higher on damage done than the next dpser. I liked being durable.

SP was a great class to bring for progression. We may not have all the gimmicks, but our class design used to lead us to always looking for ways to optimize ranged positioning—as we benefitted disproportionately when standing still and had shit movement to boot. We also had loads of durability. 10% dr, Pom, pws, 90% dispersion, inner fire. Often we could intentionally eat a tick of damage to finish off a MB cast or flay tick and be fine where as a mage might just fall over. At least during my raid years, myself and the other spriest were habitually among the last alive on wipes and near wipe first kills.

I haven’t raided seriously since WoD launch. But what few mythic raids I’ve stepped in on, the bosses seem fun, but our core rotation and “-ness” is gone.

#BringBackOldMindFlayandShadowform

[Biomega]

But wow mythic raiding is today more about mechanical skill than it ever has been.

I think this is a direct result of them dumbing down classes more than anything else. Shadow Priest rotation is a joke, really. There's so few actual decisions to make. And many other classes are the same. So what's left to do if not make everything about twitch-finger precision, either in ability timings or class mechanics.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

I think this is a direct result of them dumbing down classes more than anything else. Shadow Priest rotation is a joke, really. There's so few actual decisions to make. And many other classes are the same. So what's left to do if not make everything about twitch-finger precision, either in ability timings or class mechanics.

As much as classes have been pruned over the years, the current BFA classes are only really "dumbed down" from Cata and MoP (the height of class complexity). SP is a special case, in that Legion was the (by far) hardest version of the spec to play optimally, because of how extremely punishing it was if you made a single mistake. The short VF Mastery stacking build we played in NH is the only exception.

Most BFA specs are still more complex than they were in WotLK, and about equal to their WoD/Legion versions. It's obviously much more complex than anything from Classic or TBC.

[sourlol]

As much as classes have been pruned over the years, the current BFA classes are only really "dumbed down" from Cata and MoP (the height of class complexity).

Most BFA specs are still more complex than they were in WotLK, and about equal to their WoD/Legion versions. It's obviously much more complex than anything from Classic or TBC.

At least in WotLK we had snapshotting. That was back when they were playing with hose haste affected dots too. So every patch had a different formula.

Cata/MoP was the best time for combat rotations across all specs on the average--im sure there are outlier specs.

I wasn't a massive fan of Cata due to the majority of firelands and them raping the old world. But I cant deny that playing spriest was fun.

I'll never understand why they couldnt keep iterating on our Cata/MoP style and instead trended to this new insanity thing in the last 2 (3?) expansions.

[Echeyakee]

My memory might be failing me, but as far as I remember cata had nothing special. It was pretty much the same, but instead of VB and VF we had orbs and plague. The only things that stand out in my memory is DS tier set rotation and lol sear being the hardest hitting AoE in the game.

And if anything, I hope dot snapshotting never returns. It's just an unnecessary ballache. Sure, in BFA it would be beyond retarded, considering we always have some sort of proc rolling between azerite traits, enchants, trinkets and odd misc items, but even if they were to tone it down and make it work with pandemic in some way, it's just an archaic concept at this point.

[marathal]

My memory might be failing me, but as far as I remember cata had nothing special. It was pretty much the same, but instead of VB and VF we had orbs and plague. The only things that stand out in my memory is DS tier set rotation and lol sear being the hardest hitting AoE in the game.

And if anything, I hope dot snapshotting never returns. It's just an unnecessary ballache. Sure, in BFA it would be beyond retarded, considering we always have some sort of proc rolling between azerite traits, enchants, trinkets and odd misc items, but even if they were to tone it down and make it work with pandemic in some way, it's just an archaic concept at this point.

Wasn't it Cata that introduced the Mind Spike rotation? All I recall is Mind Spike clears your DoT's and kept thinking, what the heck, are they crazy? Adding in a spell that clears the foundation of the class design? We all worked it out and we were fine.

I remember those days, 98% uptime or better was the goal. Draenor and Legion did me in with the Insanity build. You are right, the best choice had was the most punishing if you made one minor slip. I haven't really raided since, I feel like I am an anchor dragging down the raid, just another body that is increasing the bosses health but not bringing the needed DPS to compensate. I am sure that there are a great many better players than I am now, but I cannot keep up with the ultra fast reflexes, having Weak Auras time all of my casts. I miss the old days, like mentioned, finding the sweet spot to avoid needing to move, learning how to anticipate having to move so all of our DoTs were running, clipping Mind Flay, and Devouring Plague, I miss you long time.